


silver in our lungs

by taywen



Category: Spinning Silver - Naomi Novik
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-08-28 02:52:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16715199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taywen/pseuds/taywen
Summary: The marks had been with Miryem for as long as she could remember. There were a number of them, all the same shade, following one after the other around her left wrist. They were pale as old scars, though they felt no different from the rest of her skin, and her mother claimed that Miryem had been born with them.





	silver in our lungs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ChristyCorr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChristyCorr/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, ChristyCorr! I hope the season treats you well!
> 
>  
> 
> (The canon timeline has been fudged ever so slightly, and several lines have been transcribed directly from the book. Title from Florence + the Machine’s “Spectrum”.)

The marks had been with Miryem for as long as she could remember. There were a number of them, all the same shade, following one after the other around her left wrist. They were pale as old scars, though they felt no different from the rest of her skin, and her mother claimed that Miryem had been born with them.  
  
From an early age, Miryem was convinced there was some meaning to them. The marks were arranged in an orderly fashion, spaced evenly apart like the digits of an improbably large number, or the letters of a word: too perfect to be entirely natural, but for the fact that they were. Some of the individual marks even repeated, which only strengthened her conviction that they held some significance, though the marks resembled no numerals or alphabet that anyone in her family was familiar with.  
  
She even asked her grandfather once, on one of her infrequent visits to Vysnia with her mother; he only frowned down at it without recognition, and then on the day they left, her grandmother gave her a plain bracelet that concealed the marks perfectly when Miryem tried it on.  
  
Keeping the marks hidden was sensible; Miryem was already different enough from the other villagers. But she didn’t like it any more than she liked hearing the villagers tell _that_ story, and she put the bracelet on only when she had to travel into town. When she was home and there were no chores to do, she stared at the marks, as if she could somehow divine their meaning if only she looked long or hard enough.  
  
It was a distraction in the winter months, which ran ever longer as the years wore on, when the alternative was sitting in her family’s drafty house and trying to ignore the insistent pinch of hunger—until she couldn’t anymore, and she became the town’s money lender and everything that came with it: keeping the records straight, selling the goods given to her in lieu of payment, boasting of her talents where the Staryk could overhear…

* * *

Anyone would have forgotten the mysterious birthmarks when she had a Staryk lord demanding she turn his silver to gold or face an icy death for speaking falsely. Miryem did not think on the marks at all until together they’d put a crown of gold on her head and sequestered themselves in this strange room near the glass mountain’s peak.  
  
At first she was too intent upon avoiding the wedding bed to which she was entitled, and so the sight of the Staryk’s bare chest did not really catch her eye, but as he folded his arms before her, his unbuttoned cuffs drew back. The skin beneath was pale as the rest of him—save for the series of ink black marks spanning the back of his right wrist like a bracelet.  
  
“What is that?” she demanded, all thoughts of bargaining temporarily forgotten.  
  
The outrage from before returned full force, and then some. He tugged his sleeve back down at once, fastening it swiftly. “A name,” he said, coldly enough that Miryem felt chilled for the first time since entering his domain. She knew that much, and nearly said so, but something held her tongue: he looked, if possible, even more murderous than before. “Ask twice more,” he added impatiently.  
  
She took another breath, gathering her thoughts. Evidently, he had agreed to her terms—not that he’d bothered to tell her. There was so much about the rules and customs that held sway in the glass mountain that she did not know, and they were more pressing concerns than the name on his wrist. She asked how a bargain was made, and what he would take to let her leave, and then he was gone and she was alone.  
  
None of his answers had been particularly useful or forthcoming, but they had won her a measure of privacy. In the silence that fell in the Staryk’s wake, she slowly pushed up her left sleeve. It was habit to wear the bracelet when she was out of the house; she had hardly taken it off in the frantic week previous. The plain metal was dull with age, scored along the top in the same place that a small scar had healed in the back of her hand: the remnants of some half-forgotten childhood accident. The scar was paler than the rest of her skin and slightly raised, yet utterly different than the milk pale marks that Miryem knew lay flush to her skin beneath the bracelet.  
  
She drew the bracelet off, half-expecting it to turn to gold beneath her fingers, but of course it was not silver—Staryk or otherwise. Her pragmatic grandfather had never permitted her grandmother to buy her extravagant dresses, and that extended to the bracelet he’d ordered her to procure after he’d seen Miryem’s marks. She set the trinket on the table, next to the dented golden cup that her husband had intended to poison her with. Then, and only then, did she look at her wrist.  
  
The marks looked strange. They were the same as they had always been, the shapes of them familiar—only not incomprehensible. As she stared, the sound of each individual character came intuitively to her mind, as if someone stood at her shoulder and whispered them in her ear, and she knew with absolute, baffling certainty how to pronounce the name the letters formed.  
  
She knew it as intimately as she knew her own name—her own name, which had been written in ancient Hebrew on the Staryk’s right wrist.

* * *

Miryem did not ask him about what the names meant immediately. Names evidently had some significance that they lacked in the sunlit lands; Flek and Tsop’s reaction to her nicknames, and the Staryk’s own stipulation that she never ask for his name, told her as much without her having to ask.  
  
The marks—the _name_ —wore on her in idle moments, as surely as it had in the sunlit world; but though she had plenty of time to herself, she had lost all longing to uncover the meaning of her marks. She knew that they were a name now, but she knew not whose, though she had her suspicions. As for why she had been born with a Staryk’s name frostbitten into her skin? She did not know if she wanted that answered, and there were more pressing issues besides; she asked the Staryk questions about those instead.  
  
But he vexed her more than usual this evening, so rather than inquire about some other common knowledge facet of life in the glass mountain, she asked instead, “What does it mean to have a name on your wrist?”  
  
The Staryk drew himself up, mortally offended. “I have no obligation to answer questions about my name. Ask a different question.”  
  
“The name on your wrist is not your own,” she said coolly.  
  
He glared at her and said through clenched teeth, “It is the name of the other half of my soul.”  
  
“Mortals don’t have—that,” she said blankly. It was probably prudent not to ask if he knew whose name she bore on her arm.  
  
The Staryk said nothing, somehow managing to convey his impatience and disdain without really altering his expression.  
  
“Then, the other half of your soul would have your name on their wrist?” Miryem asked after a moment.  
  
“Most likely,” the Staryk said stiffly. “Though it may not be on their wrist. And no Staryk would reveal the name of the other half of their soul to someone else,” he added angrily, “so do not think to seek my name in that fashion!”  
  
Miryem looked pointedly at his wrist. He’d taken to wearing a heavy golden cuff over it since she’d arrived in the glass mountain, its edge just visible beneath his sleeve—as if that could make her forget what she’d seen. The Staryk’s hand twitched, as if he thought of folding his arms and tucking it out of sight before deciding against it. His long fingers curled into a fist instead, and he looked even more furious than before when she met his gaze once more.  
  
“The name on your wrist is not a Staryk name,” she said meanly, angry herself for reasons she did not care to identify.  
  
He did not flinch, but the stricken expression that surfaced briefly on the hard planes of his face almost made her regret the words. “No,” he said—answering her, though she had not meant to make it a question—and turning made directly for the door.  
  
She murmured the name on her wrist, softly enough that he might not even hear her; when he halted and turned, his eyes wide, she did not know how to feel. Triumph? Regret? Fear?  
  
“What did you say?” he demanded, his whole being—voice, eyes, posture—going sharp and cutting. He crossed the room toward her in two swift steps, his long legs making the distance trivial.  
  
She lifted her chin, unwilling to give so much as an inch. “What will you give me in return for an answer?”  
  
The Staryk hissed angrily, the sound like a biting wind through the trees, and stalked away once more. She said nothing else, barely managing to cross to the curtained bower of her bed before she collapsed upon it.  
  
Her hands did not shake as she pulled off the bracelet, but only because she did not let them. She stared at the Staryk-pale word on her skin—at the _Staryk king’s name_ —and wondered what to do.

* * *

The sleigh ride the following day did little to solve her dilemma over the names, though it did prove that she was stuck in the Staryk’s kingdom until he decided to let her go—and the other girl Miryem met along the way gave her other thoughts to dwell on: namely, the prospect of her imminent death if she failed to turn the Staryk king's storerooms of silver to gold in exchange for his taking her to Basia’s wedding.

But she managed it, with the help of Flek and Tsop and Shofer, one impossible task accomplished and only the last yet to overcome: lure the Staryk king into a fight to the death with the demonic tsar.

Almost unbelieving that they had done it, Miryem stared at the three Staryk, her bondswomen and bondsman, willing and able to answer any questions she might have. There were many things she wanted to know, but none of them seemed safe to voice, except perhaps—  
  
“What does it mean to be the other half of someone’s soul?” she asked. The concept sounded straightforward enough, but many things that she had thought straightforward were anything but here in the glass mountain. She needed to be certain.  
  
Tsop and Shofer exchanged looks, as if trying to decide who should answer.  
  
Though neither of them looked at her, it was Flek who spoke first, her voice harder than Miryem had ever heard. “The other half of your soul is the one destined to complete you. Or so the Staryk believe.” She glanced at Tsop and Shofer, who were not quite looking at her. “I do not agree. I believe that the name some of us are born bearing signifies only that the person will greatly affect your life.” She lifted her chin, looking directly at Miryem. “I can only offer my own perspective, however, Open-Handed.”  
  
Miryem wanted to press Flek further, but they all seemed to some degree uncomfortable. After a moment, she asked, “What is a more traditional perspective, then?”  
  
Tsop lifted her shoulders briefly. “If two halves of a soul find each other, they are expected to cleave to one another.” That sounded rather like marriage. Miryem forced her face to remain neutral as Tsop continued, “Most pairings are assumed to be matched souls, more suited to one another than any other. Soulmates, you might call them. Some soulmates claim they can feel each other’s presence even from a distance, and much else besides.”  
  
“Exceptions do exist,” Shofer said hurriedly; perhaps Miryem had allowed some of her disquiet to show. “Among the higher ranks particularly, matches are often made for other reasons.” Or perhaps he thought they’d offended her with talk of soulmates, when mortals such as herself had none. If only they knew. “Not all Staryk are born with a single name written on their skin. I’ve heard tales of Staryk bearing more than one, or none at all, or one person bearing a second’s name, but the name on the second person’s matches another’s, or they have been promised to someone else. And even if your name matches another’s, that does not guarantee happiness or even compatibility—but it is not usually discussed.” He and Tsop might as well have been gawking at Flek for how pointedly they were not looking at her.  
  
“It is discussed,” Flek said. “Only not openly. Behind closed doors, or whispered at the edge of your hearing—” She cut herself off, but the raw words lingered in the air between them.  
  
Miryem met Flek’s eyes; the other woman had seldom held Miryem’s gaze for long, averting her eyes as a proper servant should the same as Tsop and Shofer, but now she stared back at Miryem almost angrily.  
  
“Thank you for telling me,” Miryem said; she could not say why they all twitched uneasily at that, but neither could she muster herself to care. Her exhaustion from before was back, the brief burst of energy granted her by her animosity with the Staryk king and the strained relief of completing an impossible task all drained from her again. “Well, if I have all the time in the world, now, I _do_ want a bath. And then I will change your silver before I go.”

* * *

Miryem half-expected her entire forearm to be a mass of bruises when she awoke the morning after she betrayed the Staryk, for he had not been gentle in his attempts to drag her back to his kingdom. But when she drew back her sleeve, her skin was unblemished even where the edges of her bracelet had dug in, unlike her poor father. She could see the deep bruises where the Staryk had battered him even now, slumbering peacefully next to her mother.

The marks beneath the bracelet were unchanged as well; somehow she’d thought it might be otherwise. She stared at the name, remembering Flek’s words, and also her daughter Rebekah, whom Miryem had named when Flek’s soulmate would not. She had not thought the demon would go after the rest of the Staryk, but the events of the night before had made clear many things. It had been foolish to think that the demon and the Staryk would kill each other, when the more likely outcome she and Irina should have foreseen was that one would triumph over the other and emerge too powerful for them to easily defeat in the aftermath.  
  
Perhaps she could have bound him with his name after he dealt with the demon, but she had known better than to utter his name before the creature. She’d thought the Staryk king and the demon to be cut from the same cloth, but the Staryk king did have concern for his people as motivation, as flimsy a justification as that was for his actions; the demon was driven only to sate its own vast hunger.  
  
The Staryk would not yield to Chernobog, of this Miryem was certain, but if the king’s strength was tied directly to that of his kingdom, it might not matter whether he yielded or not before the end. Rebekah and Flek and Tsop and Shofer would all die eventually, devoured by the demon; this, Miryem did not doubt either.  
  
The room was too hot. Though she had dwelled there for less than a fortnight, she had grown accustomed to the chill of the glass mountain; she went to the window to let in some air.  
  
Outside, the world was all green: with winter’s defeat, spring had returned with a vengeance.

* * *

Her Staryk went unnaturally still when he saw the marriage contract; they had discussed the terms beforehand, and Miryem was quite certain he could not read the Aramaic script in any case, so she could not say what the problem was. But he gathered himself before anyone else could notice his sudden disquiet and signed swiftly, laying his name out in silver ink in the same hand that was frostbitten around her wrist. If she compared the two, they would be exact matches.  
  
She considered signing her name in Hebrew, but the thought of seeing her unpracticed hand next to his neat signature overcame that sentiment. She signed in black ink, _Miryem Mandelstam_ , and when she put the pen aside and straightened, her Staryk—her husband—was watching her the same way he had before, as if she were precious to him. As if the fact that the name on his marriage contract was not the name on his wrist did not signify.  
  
They drank the wine and he broke the glass; it was not exactly as Basia’s wedding had been, even leaving aside the various royal visitors at the end, but she would not have it any other way. Anticipation swelled within her as the evening wore on: whether it was wholly her own, or whether her Staryk felt it and some of it transferred to her, she could not say. As Tsop had said, Miryem had come to sense her Staryk’s moods over the months they spent in the winter world. She had said nothing of it at the time, as they had agreed to part ways at the advent of winter in the sunlit realm, and in the two weeks since he’d tried to court her, there had never been time to bring it up.  
  
If he noticed any similar transfer of emotion from her, he made no mention of it. But then, he was not aware of that extra connection between them, and more often than not their emotions aligned, focused as they were on the same goals.  
  
And when all was said and done, and they departed, it was only the two of them in the sleigh, for the rest of the Staryk awaited them at the glass mountain, but the ride back to his—to _their_ —realm took longer than usual. Miryem watched the winter forest go by, content to wait; the anticipation was mingled with anxiety now, an uncharacteristic hesitation from her Staryk.  
  
The landscape had changed considerably in two weeks. The blanket of snow had deepened, and the last traces of Chernobog’s fiery path to the glass mountain had disappeared as winter settled in fully in the sunlit world. The sight filled her with satisfaction, and a few minutes later it occurred to her to send that to him: she hadn’t tried to deliberately share her emotions before.  
  
He actually flinched: the motion was subtle, little more than a slight hitch of his shoulders, but tangible nonetheless. His shock came clearly through the bond between them, but the mountain loomed suddenly before them, the great gates thrown wide, and they came into the glade before he could speak.

* * *

She had no notion of what a traditional Staryk wedding entailed, though she had no doubt they followed the customs to the letter. Everyone was joyful, Flek and Rebekah and Tsop and Shofer and his soulmate—another former servant who had been elevated along with his partner—and all the rest of the Staryk too. The difference between this occasion and when she had first come to the mountain was almost as stark as the contrast between her Staryk’s rising impatience and his outwardly cool demeanour.  
  
Miryem had begun to feel some anxiety herself by the time they climbed the stairs up to her chambers. There had been little time to dread her wedding night seven months ago: the numb shock had dulled most of it, and her anger with the king had taken care of the rest.  
  
“You can read the script of my name,” her Staryk said as soon as they were through the door, turning urgently to regard her. He unclasped the bracelet—more like a bracer, she saw, as he drew it out of his sleeve—and bared his wrist to her. She stared at her name for a moment. It was inked in her own hand the same as his name was written in his hand. She hadn’t noticed that detail, before.  
  
He shivered beneath her fingers: she had reached out to trace the letters. His other hand closed around hers when she made to draw away, and she looked up at him. “I can. But for what reason do you want to know?”  
  
“I have long wondered what the letters read, but before you there was no one I trusted to translate.”  
  
“So you waited to wed me properly before turning to the task of seeking the other half of your soul?” She could not quite manage an accusatory tone, however, and he could likely tell that her intent was to tease more than anything.  
  
His eyes narrowed, but he was suspicious rather than offended. “You know whose name it is.”  
  
“Do you not?” Miryem smiled then, unable to contain it; she had been smiling all day, and her cheeks fairly ached with it, but she could not stop. “And what will you give me in exchange for my name?”  
  
Her Staryk paused for but a moment. “ _Your_ name, Lady?”  
  
In answer, she slipped off her own bracelet and held out her hand. He shivered again and knelt before her, his pale eyes fixed upon her wrist; his hands shook as he reached out to touch her, his fingers gentle on her skin as he drank in the sight of his name.  
  
She brimmed with joy; it filled her near to overflowing, buoyed by her Staryk’s own happiness. He pressed his lips to her wrist, which she allowed for but a moment before pulling him up so she could kiss him _properly_.


End file.
